The Idiot — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Description

Prince Myshkin, a genuinely good and guileless man, returns to Russian society and becomes entangled in a web of passion, jealousy, and tragedy. Dostoyevsky's 1869 novel is a profound exploration of innocence in a corrupt world, and one of the great tragic love stories in world literature.

Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Genre: Fiction / Russian Literature

Excerpt

Towards the end of November, during a thaw, at nine o'clock one morning, a train on the Warsaw and Petersburg railway was approaching the latter city at full speed. The morning was so damp and misty that it was only with great difficulty that the day succeeded in breaking; and it was impossible to distinguish anything more than a few yards away from the carriage windows.

Some of the passengers by this particular train were returning from abroad; but the third-class carriages were the best filled, chiefly with insignificant persons of various occupations and degrees, picked up at the different stations nearer town.